The Hidden Danger of LNK Files on Your Computer


The Hidden Danger of LNK Files on Your Computer

Episode 34 of The Awareness Angle is packed with real-world breaches, practical advice, and a surprisingly useful pigeon. Ant and Luke break down the stories behind the headlines, from major retail ransomware to the hidden dangers of shortcut files, and share why awareness still matters more than ever.

We start with Marks & Spencer, who have finally resumed online orders six weeks after a devastating cyberattack. The incident disrupted everything from contactless payments to click-and-collect, and is estimated to have cost the retailer around £300 million. Ant and Luke reflect on the wider impact this has had across the retail sector, praising M&S for getting back online and raising awareness of cyber threats in the process.

Next up, US-based food wholesaler UNFI – a key supplier to Whole Foods – confirmed it had been hit by a cyberattack, forcing some systems offline and delaying orders. It’s a reminder that cyberattacks on supply chains have knock-on effects far beyond the target, affecting customers, retailers, and even the stock market.

Back in the UK, the British Horseracing Authority was also impacted by a cyber incident. Despite the disruption, race meetings continued, showing the importance of contingency plans and operational resilience. In contrast, NHS Professionals, a major staffing agency for the NHS, took over a year to disclose its breach. Attackers reportedly stole the Active Directory database using a compromised Citrix account. Deloitte’s investigation suggests stolen credentials, lack of MFA, and poor endpoint detection contributed to the damage. Ant and Luke question the delay in disclosure and talk about the importance of basic security hygiene.

In the phishing and threats section, the duo look at a new macOS malware campaign involving the Atomic Stealer. Using a fake CAPTCHA, the attack tricks users into pasting code into their terminal. It’s part of a growing trend called ClickFix, which relies on fake error messages and security prompts to manipulate users. It’s not just Windows users at risk anymore.

Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday brings 66 security fixes, including one zero-day flaw already being exploited in the wild. But another unpatched threat is getting attention: a vulnerability in Windows shortcut (.LNK) files that lets attackers embed malicious network paths. Just viewing the file in Explorer can trigger a hidden payload. Microsoft is relying on Defender and Smart App Control for now, with no full patch available yet.

The episode also revisits the FAA’s long-overdue plan to replace Windows 95 and floppy disks in US air traffic control. While it might sound like a punchline, it highlights just how much critical infrastructure still relies on outdated tech. Meanwhile, WhatsApp has joined Apple in challenging the UK Home Office’s demand for a backdoor into encrypted data.

And with Windows 10 support ending in October 2025, Ant and Luke discuss the grassroots movement encouraging users to switch to Linux instead of buying new hardware. The "End of 10" project promotes open-source alternatives, with benefits for privacy, the environment, and user control.

Ant also introduces the concept of an "attack atmosphere," a broader way of thinking about cybersecurity risks that considers the entire environment, not just obvious vulnerabilities. This ties in with a conversation about human behaviour, and how changing that is more effective than any tool you can buy.

Oh, and the pigeon? You’ll have to listen to the episode for that one – but trust us, it makes more sense than you think.

New episodes of The Awareness Angle are released every Monday, with interviews dropping every other Thursday. Subscribe via your favourite podcast app or visit riskycreative.com to sign up for the newsletter.

 

M&S resumes online orders after cyber attack
Watch – https://youtu.be/DXTmp1gdgIQ?t=87
Read – https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2025/06/marks-spencer-resumes-online-orders-after-cyberattack/

UNFI cyberattack disrupts Whole Foods supply chain
Watch – https://youtu.be/DXTmp1gdgIQ?t=210
Read – https://www.securityweek.com/unfi-hit-by-cyberattack-impacting-operations/

British Horseracing Authority confirms cyber breach
Watch – https://youtu.be/DXTmp1gdgIQ?t=294
Read – https://www.thoroughbrednews.com.au/news/story/bha-hit-by-cyber-attack-163838

NHS Professionals breach kept quiet for 13 months
Watch – https://youtu.be/DXTmp1gdgIQ?t=375
Read – https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/06/nhs_professionals_data_breach/

Atomic macOS Stealer campaign using ClickFix
Watch – https://youtu.be/DXTmp1gdgIQ?t=723
Read – https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/macos-users-targeted-with-atomic-stealer-in-fake-spectrum-sites/

Microsoft June Patch Tuesday – 66 flaws, 1 zero-day
Watch – https://youtu.be/DXTmp1gdgIQ?t=1076
Read – https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-june-2025-patch-tuesday-fixes-exploited-zero-day-66-flaws/

LNK shortcut file flaw – no patch yet
Watch – https://youtu.be/DXTmp1gdgIQ?t=1189
Read – https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-warns-of-windows-lnk-zero-day-used-in-attacks/

FAA still using Windows 95 and floppy disks
Watch – https://youtu.be/DXTmp1gdgIQ?t=2207
Read – https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/faa-finally-eliminating-floppy-disks-from-air-traffic-control

WhatsApp joins Apple in UK encryption fight
Watch – https://youtu.be/DXTmp1gdgIQ?t=2432
Read – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68948697

End of Windows 10 – should you switch to Linux?
Watch – https://youtu.be/DXTmp1gdgIQ?t=2697
Read – https://endof10.org/

New 'attack atmosphere' mindset in cybersecurity
Watch – https://youtu.be/DXTmp1gdgIQ?t=3148
Read – https://www.bitdefender.com/blog/businessinsights/the-evolution-from-attack-surface-to-attack-atmosphere/



Missed the episode? Watch it below!


Transcript - 

Anthony Davis (00:01.047)
Welcome to the Awareness Angle, the podcast that digs into the messy, weird and occasionally ridiculous world of cyber security. We're here to break down scams, stories and why people still click dodgy links. Everything we say is based on our own opinions and experiences. So if anything sounds too bold, don't blame our employers. They'd probably prefer we kept quiet. I'm Matt Davis and with me as always is the guy that makes us look and sound way more professional than we actually are.

than I actually are. It's Luke. How are doing Luke?

Luke (00:34.018)
Hey, yeah good, I like the new intro. You missed out the award winning, but it's probably what...

Anthony Davis (00:37.189)
Yeah try something new why not.

my God, yeah, we are the award-winning. How can I do that? Should restart with the award-winning podcast. We're going to take things back to basics like the award that we won. So let's get onto it. In this episode, we've got news about the latest update on retail cyber incidents. We've got the NHS getting hacked. We've got Mac OS malware. We've got patch Tuesday.

Luke (00:45.358)
You

Anthony Davis (01:10.417)
We've got unpatched threats, updates on old stories, and then we've got a couple of topics to go through. All of that and a whole lot more on this week's The Awareness Angle. Right, so let's get straight into it with the news.

Luke (01:27.598)
Cool. Yeah, so our latest update on M &S, so they've resumed their online orders six weeks after their cyber attack, which was obviously the scattered spider and dragon force ransomware incident. yeah, this obviously initially disrupted their contactless payments and could collect and this led to an estimated 300 million pounds of loss.

Anthony Davis (01:56.583)
Let's have a little round of applause for Marks and Spencers again.

Luke (02:00.567)
Yeah, I mean...

Anthony Davis (02:01.575)
fully sincere as well. can't even imagine what they've gone through dealing with that. So well done &S.

Luke (02:06.678)
Yeah, it's been a long time I'm sure. So yeah, they've reached to stay online orders as yes, six weeks after that so happened. So yeah, mean, it's pretty much us to really talk on on this one.

Anthony Davis (02:25.063)
I think, I mean, it's amazing they're back online. It's really good. We definitely probably, we almost definitely haven't heard the end of this. There'll be a documentary, you know, there'll be speaking slots from senior leaders on the talking circuit coming to a conference near you in 12 to 18 months will be someone senior at &S talking about their incident. it's, there's gonna be lot of lessons to learn from this, I think. It's gonna be an interesting one that we're gonna hear a lot of over the coming years.

Luke (02:46.83)
Probably.

Luke (02:51.47)
Hmm.

Yeah, I think a lot of businesses as well, obviously, a lot and maybe gone back to retro respectively, do a lot of behind the scenes work.

Anthony Davis (03:07.185)
Definitely I think the retail industry is a lot more secure for &S's pain. And other businesses as well. This has helped shine a bit of a spotlight onto cyber security, so it's good. Thank you &S. Sorry, sadly you had to be on the wrong end of it, but thank you for helping the rest of the world wake up a little.

Luke (03:11.246)
Mm-mm.

Anthony Davis (03:30.139)
But that's not all this week. United Natural Foods in North America, they're a grocery wholesaler and they are a key supplier to Whole Foods. It's now their turn. They've suffered a cyber attack. They've detected unauthorized activity on their systems and they've taken systems offline. So they're temporarily unable to fulfill and distribute customer orders.

and they're working with third party cybersecurity professionals and law enforcement are involved. It must be a really good time to be a third party cybersecurity professional. Like, yeah, now must be a really good time to be those people with the bat phone ready to go. I mean, this is pretty much textbook. We're seeing this across the board. This is now supply chain disruption.

Luke (04:09.931)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (04:25.521)
There was one similar a few weeks ago in the UK, a supplier of food to like Tesco's and other people were impacted. They might be targeting this vertical, this industry, but they don't care who you are. If they find a way in, they'll get in and they'll create a problem. So in the hope that you'll pay some money. yeah, it's what does it do? It calls people to work long hours, affect the share price. And it's probably a competition between them.

Luke (04:42.998)
Yeah.

Luke (04:54.006)
Yeah, unfortunately. That leads on to the next story, which is the next organization to be hit by a cyber attack. The British Horse Racing Authority, it's the governing body of UK Horse Racing, and they confirmed that they had a cyber attack on internal systems. There's some news reports about how staff have been instructed to work remotely, their London office has been closed temporarily.

But despite this they've still been able to proceed as usual Which I guess shows they've had some plans in the background waiting and ready for this sort of thing

Anthony Davis (05:35.045)
I wonder if that shows a different nature of the business. Like they've told everyone to work remotely and they've closed a London office. Marks and Spencer's turned off remote work and told everyone to come in. Two very different angles on that, but maybe different systems were affected. Who knows?

Luke (05:52.75)
Yeah, I guess it's difficult. Yeah, I'm not sure how obviously big this authority is, but yeah, the same sort of thing as well, if you have external experts in and law enforcement. But yeah, this is just the next person or next company to get affected by this sort of thing.

Anthony Davis (06:15.377)
Yeah, yeah. Well, well done on the BHA for telling everyone and being honest and transparent.

Not everyone does that as the next story will disclose. So in May, 2024, so just over 12 months ago, 13 months ago, attackers broke into a system at NHS professionals, which are the UK's largest temporary staff provider for NHS trusts. And they stole their Active Directory database, which is essentially Active Directory is like

the telephone book for your company that has all of your users listed. All of their passwords are associated with that. It's kind of like the brain of your computer logins and identification system. Someone's gonna tell me I've described that wrong, but that's like a crude way to understand it, I think.

Luke (07:05.774)
Yeah, I mean it's...

Luke (07:10.924)
Yeah, I that's what was reported for &S, wasn't it? At some point, that's how they got the credentials.

Anthony Davis (07:13.735)
Yes, I think so. Yeah. reported or believed. I don't know whether that was actual fact, but it was definitely widely discussed. So NHS professionals didn't disclose this breach until June till just now, like June. So 13 months. So

NHS professionals themselves claim that no data was taken. don't believe they'd like no, they didn't take anything. But investigators from Deloitte said otherwise. And they believe the attackers exfiltrated Active Directory and password hackers. So they've, they've got 190,000 registered healthcare professionals on their books and over 1000 staff. So they're a big, big target. But

Now it's like, who do you believe? Do you believe Deloitte or do believe the company?

So how did they get in? It says that they used a compromised Citrix account that had a username lms.support2. That's a really familiar username. That's not unique to, I mean, both you and I look at that and we recognize names like that. it must be quite common. And when they got in, they escalated privileges, moved laterally.

So escalating privileges is where they give themselves more permission to do more things. Then they move laterally across the networks and moved across the network using things like remote desktop protocols and SMB. They installed malware and then they used a physical drive to copy data. This wasn't a casual breach. was like strategic deep. They were like in doing stuff. This wasn't just a, this was like a fall.

Luke (09:11.918)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony Davis (09:15.141)
like they're in your engine. They're not just like polishing the wheels or whatever. So yeah, this was, it says here, AD, this is a better way to describe it. AD is the heart of the enterprise. Why didn't I say that? It's the heart of enterprise access, username's password, security groups, and essentially a blueprint for your organization. So that kind of lists all of the users and what permissions they've got and where they can go. So with that, if they take that,

Luke (09:29.07)
You

Anthony Davis (09:42.833)
They can try and crack your passwords offline and they can then orchestrate credential stuffing or impersonation campaigns. It's pretty, AD is like the keys to the kingdom. It's quite an important thing. So Deloitte have been in, Deloitte have looked at this. They've flagged the fact that no multifactorial authentication on critical accounts is a key failure. They've said that there's poor

EDR endpoint detection and response poor EDR coverage Which let the attackers roam undetected. So they've got devices that don't have any EDR on And then they said there's no drive mapping safeguards which exploited which were exploited to copy AD databases. So Yeah Deloitte helped in the NHS reset AD rotate certificates passwords disable unnecessary accounts and mapping

and then rolled out multi-factor authentication. it's MFA is such a key part in everything we do. know, pass it before pass keys, which we've spoken about previously, you've got to get to MFA and not SMS.

Luke (10:58.668)
Yeah, especially on privileged accounts and these accounts that, not just user accounts.

Anthony Davis (11:07.259)
Half the time we put off doing things because we're scared of the disruption and we're scared of the potential impact these changes will have. But it's only when you're faced like at the coalface and stuff's happening that you make these changes. Everybody like there's going to be friction, but sometimes friction is necessary. Right. And there's never a good time. There's always a backlog. There's always bigger projects. But I think in the current security climate now, if you've got a backlog,

of security works that hasn't been given the right attention. Now's the time to get someone to do something about it. There's so many examples in the press right now. Do you want to be next? Because if you want to be next, keep ignoring this problem.

Luke (11:52.238)
here. Big mistake from this example here. It's very messy.

Anthony Davis (11:54.064)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (12:03.367)
Yeah, yeah, it's not a fun one.

Right, that's kind of the news for this week. We're gonna, this section is a newer section. We did this once before, but it's slightly different. So we're gonna do what we call fish and threats. So this is where we talk about the latest fishing or vulnerabilities that we've seen this week. So we're splitting the news out into two. So we've got the news, stories of the companies that have been impacted. And now we're talking about the stuff that's knocking on your door, the stuff that might be coming to get you.

or the things you need to do to stop them coming and get you. So this is fish and threats.

Luke (12:44.654)
Cool, yeah. So yeah, the first threat, I guess, is something we've seen before with ClickFix. yeah, it's a tag vector that's been sort of a bit on the rise recently. Yeah, so it's essentially the scan where you land on a page, typically like a capture or a...

Anthony Davis (13:00.785)
We've spoken about click fix a number of times.

Luke (13:11.342)
could be a car flare security check thing you click on it pops up saying there's something wrong click here to fix it and it does the whole copy malicious code to the clipboard and tells you to run it or paste it into a terminal window and then obviously yeah deploys some malware and other nasty stuff

Anthony Davis (13:30.769)
So we covered this a couple of weeks ago. There was three or four stories, all Windows based.

Luke (13:35.756)
Yeah, so there's one with Zoom, Google Meet as well, like your camera's not working, hit click here to fix it.

Anthony Davis (13:43.473)
There was a fake capture. When you click the capture, it tells you to press WinR. Now obviously there's no WinR on Mac. So this is the Mac equivalent of that.

Luke (13:52.64)
Yeah, so this is a Mac OS campaign that's going around. It's called Atomic Mac OS Stealer. Amos for short. And yeah, this one is supposedly starting with a fake US telecom company called Spectrum. I guess they people may have got there through a dodgy sponsored ad. That's a dodgy one.

just an ad in general that maybe they clicked on and it's taken them here but yeah, it shows a fake capture page and prompts them to run a command, paste obviously into terminal on a Mac and this runs a script that steals credentials and downloads malware but yeah, says it has been attributed to Russian speaking actors and this yeah

just reflects on this increasing trend of click-fix based distribution. Something else to mention is these sorts of things typically use a URL that's like a typo-scoring domain, it's something that resembles a genuine domain but has a different character or different letter or something slightly different that could just pass by without being detected really. And then yeah.

I guess the general sort of message really is, especially for a business, guess users probably shouldn't be doing their own IT support in a lot of cases, especially not pasting in commands that they found on the internet or have been told to run from a webpage. So yeah.

Anthony Davis (15:33.031)
Like we said a couple of weeks ago, no webpage should ever ask you to paste code into a terminal or run box. Like I can't.

legitimate reason.

should ever be a thing.

Luke (15:49.742)
Yeah, mean, personal computers are bit different maybe if you're trying to find a fix and you've landed somewhere dodgy, but this sort of thing here is a bit more targeted in a way of, um, it could come from a, I think originally it started from a phishing email, click fix like a Microsoft based phishing email, I think it was, but these are, you know, appearing on web pages now, I guess that you're landing on through, yeah, dodgy ads or.

dodgy pop-ups. So yeah. It's not just Windows now.

Anthony Davis (16:28.583)
do wonder if this means that we're gonna start seeing less captures. It's quite funny actually, I've just Googled, I knew there was a thing about invisible recaptures. So where you just looked at behavior, didn't have to act, the user didn't actually have to click. And I've Googled a page and the WordPress page it refers to is down. It's telling me that it needs configuration, which is strange.

Luke (16:47.726)
Mm.

Anthony Davis (16:58.671)
I do wonder if this will, if people lose trust in captures, then will we stop seeing captures? Which if attackers could please do this, but with cookies instead. So we stopped seeing cookies. That would be cool. Like if you could just fake cookie warnings. I'm joking, of course. Don't don't, but yeah.

Luke (17:06.155)
Yeah.

Luke (17:17.07)
Yeah, to be fair, I'd probably just move to the next one like you said really. But it's just a thing to educate, I guess, what you should expect the user flow sort of thing to be. Yeah, perhaps you will never ask you to run something.

Anthony Davis (17:21.767)
they will. Yeah.

Luke (17:39.01)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (17:41.751)
Yeah. Right. So if on your windows, Linux, Mac, if something asks you to paste some, if a web browser asks you to paste code in, press control and V, command and V, do not.

Anthony Davis (17:56.025)
Right, last Tuesday was Microsoft Patch Tuesday. And we have, what do we have? We have 66 security vulnerabilities this month, including 10 rated critical. And these affect various Microsoft tools. But there is an actively exploited zero day CVSS of 8.8. And this is being exploited by the APT group.

Stealth Falcon since March. And this targets defense companies in Turkey plus others. There is another publicly disclosed vulnerability, which uses a Windows SMB client elevation of privilege flaw. But this was publicly disclosed but patched before widely being exploited. There's a bunch of other stuff.

We don't need to go into the details of these because it's not that kind of podcast, but Patch Tuesday happens every month. There's always a stack of patches. Sometimes they're really nasty. Sometimes they're not so nasty. This really emphasizes the importance of installing your updates, Windows updates quite seamlessly now, but these updates are being exploited in the wild. At least one of them is. So install your updates, tell your people.

to install their updates and don't delay your restarts. Mac users looking at you who are typically really bad at delaying your restarts.

Luke (19:30.094)
you

of uptimes

Anthony Davis (19:35.761)
Yeah.

Yeah, every single patch counts. So please install your patches.

Anthony Davis (19:48.999)
The next story tonight is, and this is an unpatched vulnerability, at least at the time of recording. So Microsoft is warning that a long standing vulnerability in Windows shortcut files, which are .LNK files, .Lima November kilo, is being actively exploited. Now, what is a .LNK file? So it's essentially a shortcut.

you send someone a link to a webpage, that's a link. LNK stands for link. So we often don't even realise that they are LNK files, especially if you're on a Windows device that doesn't display the file extensions, which I don't think they do out of the box anymore. I think you have to turn that on. But just viewing this file in Explorer can trigger downloads or remote attacks. So there is no CVE.

for this flaw and there is no dedicated update. Instead, they're relying on Windows Defender and smart app control to sort it out for the time being. And a full fix is possibly months away. I think this is a really, probably a tricky one for them to solve because it's probably a design flaw. This has been around for ages, but has only recently been weaponized. So.

Luke (21:06.478)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony Davis (21:13.539)
Essentially, we're relying on the antivirus built into your operating system to defend against this. So if you don't have Windows Defender on or you use a different AV product like one baked in with your VPN client or you're one of the people that still pays for Norton or Symantec or McAfee.

you might not be protected from this. yeah. If you so essentially a scenario is you could get shortcut to view an invoice, but then when you click on it actually runs malicious code. My understanding is that this can also call out to different places on your network. So if you're in a business and there's a compromised device, if they want to like get other devices on that one way of doing is to send a link around. So if you get sent a shortcut,

Luke (21:42.797)
Yeah.

Luke (22:06.894)
Thank

Anthony Davis (22:11.217)
or a .LNK file, don't click it. Or really don't, don't just trust it blindly. Of course, like click it if you know who it's from and you trust it and you're expecting it, but don't click it.

Luke (22:15.501)
Bye.

Anthony Davis (22:26.639)
So if I read this completely, let me just go into a little bit more detail. A malicious LNK file can exploit a Windows feature by including an attacker controlled network location, targeting users across different networks. It exploits a flaw in Windows file explorer, which does not fully display certain parameters. So this vulnerability has existed for years. Microsoft claims Defender protects against it. So yeah.

Luke (22:56.942)
Yeah, it's an interesting one. I hadn't really heard of LNK files before today. I guess like it says the file extensions are typically hidden and I don't if people will deal with at least not ones that you get sent but yeah, just...

Anthony Davis (23:13.031)
I honestly think it's one of those things that you don't even think about. it's, everybody knows what an EXE is, typically. I mean, my mum probably doesn't, but a lot of people know what an EXE is, they know what a PDF is, they know what a doc is or an XLS file or an XLSX file, but a .LNK isn't something that you'd necessarily know about, but...

Everyone is now talking about this and it's not new. There's a McAfee blog article here from three years ago. McAfee still exists.

Luke (23:49.246)
I guess if you get someone or it's in a zip file it's a bit more hidden than you might open it without thinking.

Anthony Davis (23:55.601)
There's another file. Everybody knows zip files. So yeah. So yes, the one way to tell. no, I was going to say the one way to tell on this. So.

Luke (23:59.918)
you

Anthony Davis (24:13.827)
And this is the problem, I've got an image here. Let see, it's a very low, very low quality image. Let me just make this a little larger. So the image is an example of two files next to each other. And this is from a Cyber Reason blog post that I found. And you can see here, the top one is, so there's two files, the top one is a docx file, and the one underneath it is a docx.

shortcut so that's actually an LNK file and the only giveaway is the fact that when you look at file type it says shortcut and under name it's got a little arrow over the icon the little link shortcut exactly so but the file extension still says docx because yeah so this is a good reason to use windows defender which i never thought i would actually say

Luke (24:55.522)
Yeah, the little shortcut thing,

Luke (25:04.353)
Yeah.

Luke (25:09.72)
Yeah.

Yeah, especially on

Anthony Davis (25:13.199)
I don't know what you'd use instead now actually. Let's not get into antivirus tools.

Luke (25:17.922)
Well, other parts of machine I guess, yeah, make sure it's on. Like a home PC.

Anthony Davis (25:23.673)
I am running Windows Defender. I'm running the native security suite on this Windows device that I'm using. Only because I think I have got Surfshark VPN, but it doesn't. It kind of tries to force anti-virus on you. And I wanted to carry on using the baked in stuff. of trust, I now kind of trust Microsoft to know their tool. Do know what I mean?

Luke (25:31.65)
Yeah.

Luke (25:45.998)
Yeah, I think in recent OSes it's gotten quite good.

Anthony Davis (25:52.975)
It's like when you have a car and you buy parts from the main dealer versus the cheap parts from the third party. If you have a nice car, you probably want to buy the nice parts. If you care, I don't.

Right, that's all of the news and that's the fish and threats for this week.

Luke (26:15.695)
yeah.

Anthony Davis (26:17.115)
Don't forget, alongside the podcast, we have the newsletter. The awareness angle newsletter comes out every single Monday alongside the podcast. And in that newsletter, we talk about the topics we talk about on the podcast and we give you the awareness angle on them. We give you the simple security takes for each of those stories. So if you don't want to listen to the podcast, if you're fed up of hearing us, just get the newsletter. Or if you want some more information, get the newsletter.

Where can you find the newsletter, Luke?

Luke (26:48.27)
on the website www.riskycreate.com on your LinkedIn, probably not mine but yours, I should add it.

Anthony Davis (26:50.085)
What's the website address, Luke?

Yes it is. Where else can you find the newsletters?

Yes! Just-

If you Google the awareness angle, just Google the awareness angle, I think that our newsletter comes up on the first page.

Luke (27:11.982)
That's good from Google's indexing.

Anthony Davis (27:18.927)
Right. We have awareness awareness. So nothing really new to mention this week. Today we're recording this Thursday. Today was the future of cybersecurity virtual conference. It was a really, really good session. Lee Morton, Holly Foxcroft, me. Marcus Hutchins was a headline speaker and did a Q and A at the end. Really, really good session. There was also talks from vendors, Javad Malik.

Know Before, Think Cyber, we're also there. So yeah, really, really good session. If you're into the human, it was a really human focused session today. There was some other stuff as well, but lots around the human. So if you missed it, you missed it. If we can get a hold of any of the recordings or provide a link to any of the recordings, we'll put them in the newsletter, which is available everywhere we just said it was.

or in the show notes, click the link to go through to the blog page and there'll be a link there. So we'll try and get hold of them. I should be able to get a copy of mine up somewhere. If you did miss it, I did a talk about pigeon. Basically, see, can, essentially I was gonna do a talk and I had this talk prepared, right? About storytelling, because storytelling is really important. And then a pigeon got in my house. Have I told you the story about the pigeon?

Luke (28:29.966)
Intriguing.

Luke (28:47.37)
No, it's new.

Anthony Davis (28:48.647)
Okay, this was a few weeks ago. So essentially we were upstairs and we heard a strange donk, donk, donk. We were like, what's that? A kind of different frequency. So went to look and the curtains were moving and behind the sofa was a pigeon. So we essentially, the cat then jumped out from behind the sofa. So I've envisaged this like mauled pigeon to be behind the sofa. But my cat's never caught a pigeon before. My old cat used to catch pigeons for fun.

Luke (29:17.762)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony Davis (29:17.767)
but I my current cat is probably scared of the size of a pigeon. yes, we got the pigeon out and there's a story of that. And then we worked out how the pigeon had got in. And then essentially I tied all of this to a cyber security breach. We were upstairs, we got indicators of compromise with a noise. So we started to investigate and then we saw the third party that had, you know,

gained entry to our system, our environment. So we isolated the threat with a washing basket. We called in some outside resource, which was my son, he was like an animal handler. And then we managed to remove the threat from our environment. And then we started like locking it down. We shut the windows, shut the doors, and then we investigated how it happened. See, the analogies are all there. It all like ties together wonderfully. And it was all because I feed the squirrels.

Luke (29:54.338)
You

Luke (30:08.564)
Yeah. No, does. Alright.

Anthony Davis (30:16.251)
and I dropped some nuts by the back door. I dropped some nuts outside the back door and then the nut box got knocked off by the cat and the nuts went on the inside of the back door. So the pigeons come to peck at the nuts and has worked his way in the back door and then probably been scared by the cat and come in the living room and tried to fly out the window, just fallen behind the sofa.

Luke (30:34.798)
Amazing.

Anthony Davis (30:37.255)
I didn't expect to be spending four minutes talking about a pigeon tonight, so I am very sorry. That's the end of the pigeon tales, but if you want the whole thing, I will provide that at some point and put a link in the newsletter to the pigeon story.

Luke (30:42.423)
you

Luke (30:49.144)
Cool.

Anthony Davis (30:52.593)
All right. Should we talk about some comments really quickly?

Luke (30:58.082)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (31:00.807)
So I shared a video on TikTok last week. Last week we talked about Gen Z ditching passwords faster than the rest of us and moving to pass phrases. A couple of comments on TikTok about that. said, are not old, we are wise. And I agree on saying what decade people are born in instead of using those phrases. Gen Z millennial. It's like mum says that their baby is 104 weeks old instead of two years.

Luke (31:11.8)
Yeah.

Luke (31:24.398)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony Davis (31:30.631)
way.

Luke (31:31.694)
you

Anthony Davis (31:33.115)
someone says, this is brilliant. What on earth are pass keys? I think we have some more education to do to the worldwide population about that. someone said we old, two factor or no way was another one as well. someone regarding, last week we talked about signal. We're taking a stand against windows recall.

Luke (31:44.759)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (32:03.367)
and they were blocking Windows Recall from scanning signal messages, signal the messaging app. Prof. Borkensnoot said, users can just add apps they don't want captured. Recall is excellent. This is not news. To you maybe, but I think 99 % of users don't even know what Recall is. yeah. Yes, we'll put something about.

Luke (32:03.694)
Yeah.

Luke (32:23.308)
Yeah, probably not.

Anthony Davis (32:29.563)
Blender, last week he spoke about Blender and the .blend file that contained malware. FaberSoul underscore realm said, you can't trust anything anymore. No, you can't. Donovan Cole Zero said, okay.

Luke (32:32.778)
Okay.

Luke (32:42.894)
No.

Anthony Davis (32:50.855)
and then regarding an older video we shared, still using windows XP on a train. We talked about that. in a, that was a two or three, four episodes ago, I think someone four days ago said, I always loved the term military spec when it comes to computing, because all that means is it's old. So, and someone reckons I look like Bert from the big bang theory.

Luke (33:13.582)
Yeah.

Luke (33:20.302)
Alright.

Anthony Davis (33:21.027)
So there you go. Do you know who Bert from the Big Bang Theory is?

Luke (33:26.798)
off the of my head but I probably... if I see it...

Anthony Davis (33:31.353)
I... Maybe, maybe a little bit. I kind of get that in real life. Brian posing. I can see that. Yeah.

Luke (33:33.942)
Little bit, Tiny bit.

Anthony Davis (33:46.905)
Is there a likeness here?

Luke (33:50.498)
not very yet, a double gang of it, it's close

Anthony Davis (33:54.129)
glasses and a gingerly white beard.

Luke (33:57.336)
you

Anthony Davis (33:59.121)
Yeah, okay. If you want to see what he looks like, check us out on YouTube. YouTube, just search for risky creative or the awareness angle.

Luke (34:05.102)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (34:11.931)
What's next tonight? Our interview series.

Luke (34:16.696)
Yeah. So I dropped something.

Anthony Davis (34:17.935)
Yes. That's cool. It sounded like money or like chimes. was like, Ooh. So our interview series, every two weeks we launch a new interview. Last one we released was with Sarah Carty from Unboring. We talk about marketing and how marketing is relevant compared to security awareness. Well, the next one, if you care about phishing or phishing touches your world, or you run a phishing campaign,

You want to listen to the next interview we've got coming out this Thursday. I sat down with Terry McCorkill, who's the founder and CEO of Fishcloud. He has come from red teaming to protecting critical infrastructure to now leading Fishcloud. And basically they're doing things a bit different. Terry's rethought fishing training. We talk about why traditional simulations fail.

how real-time data and just-in-time training works better, and why people should be part of the solution, not just those blamed it. Basically, it flips the script on phishing simulations. it's a really good conversation with Terry, and that's available in a normal podcast feed or on the normal YouTube channel. And that'll be out this Thursday. So me interviewing Terry McCorkill.

Luke (35:46.614)
Awesome yeah, definitely sounds like one to listen to.

Anthony Davis (35:50.087)
It's a really interesting one that we all like anyone that works in cyber security awareness, information security awareness, phishing is something we all end up coming back around to. We always end up talking about it and fish clouds an interesting solution. It's definitely worth a listen. It's not a sales pitch. There's lots in there that isn't just like what they do. So yeah.

Luke (35:59.638)
is it big things in it

Luke (36:09.751)
Cool.

Anthony Davis (36:18.051)
Right, something new for this week. We're constantly rethinking it, constantly evolving. We're gonna talk about a couple of past topics. And these are because there's been updates on these or new things on these. So Luke, I'll take the first one. Do wanna take second one? So the first one is a news article I saw this week. The FAA, which is the Federal Aviation Administration.

Luke (36:23.95)
Yeah

Luke (36:37.016)
Yeah, that's cool.

Anthony Davis (36:47.387)
So they, in America, they manage air traffic control systems and the air traffic control system in America currently uses floppy disks, paper flight strips and computers running Windows 95. Nice modern tech there. yeah. Well, there's a new initiative with multi-billion dollars of funding that aims to modernize the system within four years, phasing out obsolete tech by around 2029.

Luke (37:00.622)
Yep.

Anthony Davis (37:17.829)
So FAA officials stress this is the most critical infrastructure project in decades, but meeting the timeline while keeping operations running smoothly will be a serious challenge. It's funny, because most of the people when we spoke about old hardware, most of the comments we got on LinkedIn or on TikTok and stuff, well, it's old, but it works.

Luke (37:46.476)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (37:47.015)
keeps ticking along because it just does what it needs to do.

Luke (37:50.22)
or a few people or someone mentioned about how yeah like these things are so old no one knows how to hack them anyway sort of thing but maybe at some point that is the case but maybe not in all cases

Anthony Davis (38:00.839)
It's worth noting. It's worth noting that air traffic control wasn't impacted by the CrowdStrike outage last July because you can't run CrowdStrike on a Windows 95 box. But on the other hand, you can't run CrowdStrike on a Windows 95 box. So there might be a pro there, but there's also a con. Like if there is something, when was the last time Windows 95 received a patch? I don't know. If you know, leave us something in the comments. I could probably Google it.

Luke (38:09.208)
Mm.

Luke (38:24.194)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (38:31.867)
So yes, it's gonna be some systems, air traffic control, some systems can never be shut down, never be shut down because it's crucial for safety. I can see this happening at Christmas day or something like that. So because of this, you can't just switch off one site and swap out the old stuff for new ones. And aside from that, the upgrades to this critical infrastructure should be resistant to hacking and other vulnerabilities.

Luke (39:03.118)
You

Anthony Davis (39:03.633)
keep them offline like don't connect them to the internet glue up the USB sockets so yeah they spend loads of money into maintaining the old air traffic control systems and keep them running but age will eventually catch up is what they're saying so the White House hasn't revealed what this update will cost Donald Trump's busy doing other things at the moment I think he probably doesn't really care about this

The FAA has already put a request for information to gather data from companies willing to take on the challenge.

and they're do industry days so companies can pitch their tech and ideas. I mean, it's quite an interesting way of doing it. Like talk to us, know, we're the... Yes, yes. Yeah, be interesting to know like at the top of the chain, I'm predicting this now at some point at the top of the chain, it's gonna be the air traffic control systems are now owned by Russia or something like that or China, but we'll see like.

Luke (39:44.718)
You

Yeah, someone's gonna make a lot of money.

Anthony Davis (40:08.037)
You can see these new stories emerging, can't you? I'm sure there's a fully baked American owned American developed company that has no foreign components that can. That's the news. That's the angle. Some of the news stories on this will be. But anyway, I digress. That's my past topic. Luke, over to you.

Luke (40:10.286)
in the air.

Luke (40:20.366)
you

Luke (40:32.768)
yeah, so Apple with their legal route around the UK's had a bit of an update where WhatsApp has formally joined Apple's court challenge and they're backing Apple in opposing the demand for backdoor access to encrypted user data for iCloud in UK.

And this is obviously where Apple pulled the ADP, the advanced protection that they had in place. And yeah, WhatsApp has supplied evidence that they've said should hopefully have them overturn the request for Apple. that WhatsApp will challenge any request that would be similar as well if it happened to them.

Anthony Davis (41:26.631)
So this dates back from February, it was the end of February when Apple pulled into a decryption from iPhones here in the UK because the government had asked for access or asked for a decryption. So it's quite interesting that now WhatsApp are joining them.

Luke (41:26.85)
Yeah.

Luke (41:33.026)
Mm.

Luke (41:40.301)
Yeah.

Luke (41:47.446)
Yeah, I guess maybe they've been poked. Perhaps at some point. Probably best to team up. Then go solo with it.

Anthony Davis (41:55.515)
Yes. Yes. I wonder if that was a conversation between Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg. Probably at Trump's inauguration or something like that.

Luke (42:01.962)
Mm-hmm.

Probably. But yeah, it'd interesting to see what comes from this. I think it was, mean the whole legal thing was supposed to be all secret and I think even that had some backlash. I can't remember.

Anthony Davis (42:19.099)
they were trying to do it behind closed doors but then I'm pretty sure that they were told that they couldn't.

Luke (42:31.884)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (42:32.625)
Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure we covered a story shortly after that happened that it had to be the it had to be public it wasn't allowed to happen behind closed doors, so that's Let's see where this goes if it ever gets there. I suppose

Luke (42:46.798)
Mm.

Yeah.

we'll update in the future when we know.

Anthony Davis (42:54.449)
Yeah. Excellent.

Right, that's past topics. Now let's get on to future topics. I have two things I wanted to talk to you about and neither of these are really in depth. I haven't seen anything mega exciting this week. Apart from, I wanna give a shout out to someone. I was in McDonald's and someone came up to me and said, do you do a cybersecurity podcast? I was like, yes, I do. And...

Of all the, it's the first time I've been recognized in public. So that's awesome. So I want to give a shout out to Ed, Ed from Nomios. Hello, Ed, if you're listening. Ed came up and said hi in McDonald's, which was amazing. So if you're in the market for a UK based knock or sock 24 seven coverage, get in touch with Ed Martin, him up on the.

Luke (43:32.496)
That's amazing.

Anthony Davis (43:55.377)
Look him up, Ed Martin at Nomios. Get in touch with him and I'm sure he will sort you out. There you go, Ed. He didn't ask for that. I've just, he didn't try to sell me anything either, which was amazing. So yeah, hi Ed. If you do see me or Luke in McDonald's or somewhere else, do come and say hi. Luke's probably like, don't say hi, don't say

Luke (44:03.298)
Hehehe

Luke (44:14.798)
No, yeah, I'm not as famous as you, but you never know. I can offer a selfie.

Anthony Davis (44:23.655)
Yes, selfies. should have got a selfie. That's true. Yeah.

Luke (44:28.012)
That's great.

Anthony Davis (44:29.125)
Yeah, I thought that was cool. I like, my God. I came home and told the wife and she's like, my God. It's like, shut up, it's fine. Right, two things I wanted to talk to you about this week. And the first one is I saw this article. didn't see, I don't read this paper. In like my news feed came an article from the Express, UK publication, what used to be called the Daily Express. Don't go there because it's full of adverts. And now you block origin doesn't work.

Luke (44:32.684)
You

Luke (44:56.174)
Thank

Anthony Davis (44:57.639)
can't get rid of them that effectively because the other ad blockers stock other stuff working. That's a separate conversation. It was basically said your Windows 10 PC is toast. So it was talking about the end of Windows 10. And look, support does end for Windows 10 in October the 14th. And there's going to be no security patches or feature updates for Windows 10. And the whole angle of this news article.

was instead of buying a new PC to run Windows 11, it was talking about a grassroots project called End of 10. So it was basically telling people to switch to Linux and that's what this group, End of 10, want people to do. So obviously Linux, everybody, we post about the end of Windows 10 on TikTok and stuff and all of the comments like, should use Linux, you should use this, you should lose that. Linux is great, right? Because it's free, it's open source, it's got no ads or like,

Luke (45:48.781)
You

Anthony Davis (45:55.367)
Microsoft soft telemetry. There's no co-pilot. There's no like feeding stuff back to, you know, harvest your data. And it also, the other angle we raised with Windows 10 being turned off was e-waste. You know, there's millions of computers that are just going to be vulnerable or people will just get rid of when they're still actually quite good and can still function for probably 90 % of their users. So,

What this also, essentially with Linux, Linux works on hardware that is deemed incompatible. So it works on older CPUs. It doesn't need a TPM chip, which is one of the requirements, the encryption chip. So lots of different versions of Linux. And essentially, end of 10 is a group that are encouraging users to switch from Windows 10 to Linux. And it sounds really tempting. the team...

Some people involved in the Linux community or KDE projects are included. And they're saying if you can't install Windows 10, find, if you can't install Linux, then find someone with technical expertise that can. So it's quite an interesting argument really. I mean, it's definitely, hmm?

Luke (47:15.054)
Yeah, see they've got a nice website as well. There's a website as well. Endof10.org

Anthony Davis (47:23.911)
Ha!

Luke (47:26.926)
Everyone's Pretty much what the news story mentioned I guess. then some reasons.

Anthony Davis (47:31.983)
Yeah, yeah, it's a nice simple website. They give five reasons to upgrade your old computer to Linux.

Luke (47:40.878)
They also have a map as well. can go for the reasons first.

Anthony Davis (47:45.927)
So they've got no new hardware, no license costs. So it doesn't cost you anything. You don't have to pay for the operating system. Brilliant. Enhanced privacy, interesting angle. This is quite a good angle. Windows comes with lots of ads and spyware. You're kind of selling your soul to Microsoft, which does slow down your computer. Whenever you look how to speed up Windows, one of the things it suggests is the top one is always turn off Microsoft telemetry.

It's good for the planet. Production of a computer accounts for 75 % of carbon emissions over its life cycle. So keeping it longer means you're not making something new, which is obviously bad for the planet. There's lots of local repair camps and independent professional services and computer shops available for providing you help and better user control. So you can make changes, you can do stuff. The four freedoms of software.

Use, study, share and improve. I love that.

So yeah, and then there's a link. Is this a link to a map? Is this going to tell all of the listeners exactly where I am in the world right now? It's actually...

There we go, look at that. So you can see everywhere, I mean there's, there'd be other places to get someone to help upgrade you to Linux.

Luke (49:11.746)
Yeah, these are the that have volunteered to be part of the campaign, yeah.

Anthony Davis (49:14.459)
These are the ones that have signed up to end of 10.

Look, if you're listening and you work for an IT service provider, a large chunk of our listeners are in the UK.

There's not much competition here guys. now it might be good opportunity to get you on the map. That's a really, really interesting map. I quite like that. But I digress. Look, there's loads of coverage all around the world. So yeah, end of 10. I thought it was an interesting angle. Like I've kind of poo pooed Linux previously when talking about this because you know,

My mom's not going to install Linux. She wouldn't know where to start. And it's not really simple. And she wouldn't even, she'd call it Linux or Linux or something, you know? And then which flavor do you choose? Cause there's so many. So this is a really, really good thing to do. And again, says get Rufus. So I've used Rufus for years to do many things. So yeah. Are you going to install Linux?

Luke (50:09.56)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (50:23.425)
on your old Windows 10 device. If you are, get in touch. Luke, what would you do?

Luke (50:29.258)
I yeah, I'd probably install Linux but I'm a Windows user so I'd probably upgrade my machine a bit. I mean yeah, self build sort of thing so, bit different.

Yeah.

Anthony Davis (50:40.987)
I have a media server here, I think I said before that runs Windows 10 and it's not the devices on Windows 11 compatible, but it's quite a nice, like it's a tiny box, but it's quite a juicy box. So I might actually do that. I might upgrade it to Linux. I probably won't do it this week, but I will probably do it before October and we'll see how that goes. So yeah.

One other thing I wanted to mention this week was this was another article I saw and I just thought this was, it was an interesting way to talk about it. Okay. So we talk about attack surface. Okay. But an attack surface, kind of consider, in cyber, we talk about an attack surface as being like, you know, that's where the attacks come. And there's now a concept of an attack atmosphere.

because modern threats are increasingly sophisticated and do many different things, leverage existing tools or exploit subtle vulnerabilities rather than like the big bang, the big critical vulnerabilities. Bitdefender indicates, they've done some research indicating that 84 % of major incidents involve living off the land tactics.

where attackers use legitimate admin tools to execute malicious actions. So they're basically saying that we should stop talking about a an attack surface and talk about an attack atmosphere, because it's like everywhere. It encourages a broader, more holistic approach considering the entire environment and user behaviors rather than isolated entry points. And I think...

Luke (52:14.926)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (52:28.401)
This leads into that whole massive switch that we're like never has the human element been talked about more than it is now post like &S, MGM last year. These were all socially engineering attacks. wasn't actually like to get in, there was no vulnerability. The user was the vulnerability. So.

Luke (52:38.126)
Hmm.

Luke (52:49.538)
Yeah, it proves a lot. Yeah, there's a lot more to do with human behavior and the role of an awareness professional.

Anthony Davis (53:01.683)
I saw some of the conversations I had at InfoSecurity Europe last week were that there's definitely been an uptick in interest in the human side of things. And I think now is probably a good time. I mean, it's probably not, it's probably going to be the same old thing because we need to be able to report on it. But now is probably a good time to be looking at the human side of security. Now is probably a good time to be thinking of having a career in human side of security.

change human behavior because that's the vulnerabilities you can't buy an EDR for you can't go with you can buy a no before but you or a so safe or a side safe but is that alone just turning that on and plugging it in gonna do it there's way more than that you know you can buy you buy a poster

No, I was going to say you could buy like a billboard and put a poster on it, but you need someone to like control that whole narrative and build that whole campaign and design it all. then, you know, help it land and convert it. It's not just a case of sticking out there and hoping people see it.

Luke (53:59.118)
You

Luke (54:10.478)
Yeah, I was just going to say how, yeah, for... Sorry, I lost my train of thought. That was right. Yeah, there's obviously like a lot of behavioral metrics and platforms out there that monitor those sorts of things in the air. I think it's just the importance of actually taking action on those and seeing the numbers move a bit.

Anthony Davis (54:21.041)
Sorry.

Luke (54:38.774)
rather than I said, just putting up some basic posters and messaging every now and then. There's a lot more to it that you can be doing, other than just like a security tool that protects the computer. doesn't necessarily protect the person using it.

Anthony Davis (54:58.631)
I think we as awareness professionals, and not everyone that listens to this is an awareness professional. Some people might not even know what I'm talking about when I say an awareness professional. An awareness professional is obviously someone that tries to raise awareness of cybersecurity in an organization. But I think awareness professionals, when they're a activity, an initiative, a campaign, it's really worth remembering, how do I measure success? Because if you measure success for the things you do,

You can then use that to prove your value and prove your worth and ask for more investment. Well, with this much, I was able to do this. So think of the ways that you can measure success in everything you do. But that's probably a conversation for a different episode.

Luke (55:43.692)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (55:46.489)
Right, that's me done. Luke, what did you have?

Luke (55:50.67)
Oh yeah, I just had one thing to mention today. I'm pretty sure we've shared something similar before. A phishing email I received to my Gmail. Basically, Spanish language, think it was. Obviously, I really understand what he was saying, but it mentioned something about some electronics that I've bought, apparently, and an attachment of a...

an image attachment of an invoice for supposedly PayPal. I've bought an iPhone 16 and it's how PayPal have noticed an unauthorized transaction on my account. Please call to cancel this order. So it's nothing special, nothing sophisticated, but I mean one the fact that it came to my inbox and didn't get caught. I'm not sure why it didn't, but I guess yeah, just

criminals are still trying these sorts of things which I'm surprised it even potentially works. I feel like there's better ways to be doing this sort of scam.

Anthony Davis (56:59.633)
Well, we often talk about this and I often say if it didn't work, people wouldn't do it. So deep people must fall for these because otherwise people wouldn't go to the effort of building them. this is exactly, we, it's not exactly the same, but we've done a video on this. I think we spoke, we spoke about this again. We did a video like two and a half, three years ago now, but the video.

Luke (57:05.898)
Yeah.

Luke (57:14.958)
Yeah.

Luke (57:23.182)
It's very similar.

Anthony Davis (57:29.177)
It's still completely relevant because it exactly talks about something similar to this. You get a fake PayPal invoice and then it encourages you to phone a number. We actually phoned them. So if you look on the risk, we'll put a note in the show notes and a link to it, obviously, but on our YouTube channel, one of our early videos is a PayPal video where we actually called the attackers. We actually called the number and spoke to them. So it's...

Luke (57:57.71)
Hmm.

Anthony Davis (57:58.875)
This one, there's a few interesting things to note about this and Luke chuck an image of this obviously up in post, but the...

I often complain that Gmail shouldn't let these in, right? And it's the same with Outlook, like Gmail's not, I can't blame Gmail at all. Not single-handedly. I don't think Gmail should let these in because with all the OCR technology, know, the converting images into text, Gmail should be able to tell that this is PayPal, but it hasn't come from PayPal, or that you've not received anything from this email address before. there's, if you...

Luke (58:35.927)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (58:36.603)
build up a trust profile of this email and its contents, would not be very high.

Luke (58:42.37)
Yeah, it should fail. You think and not land in the inbox.

Anthony Davis (58:46.395)
You'd think, interested to know that every mention of PayPal in this email looks to be coloured. That's all an image. So I'm wondering if the colours would throw off the OCR, where it converts the image to text. even just receiving an image, the OCR goes, we have noticed an unauthorised transaction from

account if a transaction was not made by you from some random Gmail like it's there's so many reasons it should it should at least flag that it's risky do you know what I mean

Luke (59:20.782)
Hmm, there's no subject either. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Anthony Davis (59:28.651)
Shame on you Gmail, still. Shame on you, and not just Gmail, but it probably would have landed in Outlook or Yahoo.com or many others. It's email vendors should do better with all this AI technology. Come on now, it's mad. You can make videos, I can type in 10 words and you make an amazing looking video, but you're letting this land in an inbox. That's not okay.

Luke (59:40.398)
Probably.

Luke (59:46.541)
Yeah.

Luke (59:57.184)
No, yeah, it's crazy.

Anthony Davis (01:00:00.113)
When you think about it like that, it's not okay. Batten the hatches first before building cool shit.

Luke (01:00:04.214)
Obviously, there are priorities with cool AI video generation and not fishing emails.

Anthony Davis (01:00:10.567)
money money money they're looking forward they're not looking back that's the problem yeah yeah

Luke (01:00:15.713)
Yeah.

But yeah, that's all I have this week.

Anthony Davis (01:00:21.191)
Cool. Okay.

And just a little note, next week's episode is something a little different, isn't it?

Luke (01:00:30.22)
Yeah, one of top 10 discussion.

Anthony Davis (01:00:34.075)
Yeah, Luke's on holiday, so we've done something a little different for once.

Luke (01:00:37.422)
Filipe recorded this one is.

Anthony Davis (01:00:40.987)
Yes, Luke's gonna be traveling at 90 mile an hour upside down doing loop the loops on a roller coaster. And I'm gonna have the week off, which I'm thoroughly looking forward to. But we've got an awesome episode for you where we talk about some basic cyber behaviors and some different ways to communicate cyber. So should be, if you work in cyber security, next week is for you.

Luke (01:00:50.806)
Yeah.

Anthony Davis (01:01:10.671)
If you're here for the news and for the weekly updates, you can have a week off and we'll be back the week after next with a normal, typical episode.

Right lovely. All right well have a good week and Luke I'll see you in two weeks. All right see you later. Bye.

Luke (01:01:28.822)
Yeah, cool. Catch you later. Bye for now.